


Chris's Wolf

by TriDom



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Homophobic Language, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Self-Mutilation, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-15
Updated: 2017-04-15
Packaged: 2018-10-19 04:14:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10631976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TriDom/pseuds/TriDom
Summary: When people turn 18, their soulmate's hand print appears on their body. Chris was terrified, but resigned to the fact that his mate's mark would be a man. He wasn't prepared for any other possibility.





	

Chris was born at 2:42 am. Some people didn’t know that about themselves. He was too impatient to not know.

In the earliest parts of morning on his eighteenth birthday, Chris looked at himself in a full-length mirror where he sat on his bed in the yellow glow of his lamp. He stared at the left side of his thin chest, waiting as his eyes burned with exhaustion. A deep purple bruise was turning yellow on his right bicep. Rope burns were scared into his wrists from the exercises. A faint bruise was still fading on his left cheek from a hunt earlier in the week. The burst blood vessel in his eye was taking longer to heal. His iris was still surrounded by a sea of red.

He pressed his fingers to the yellow-green skin on his chest and felt it throb. He watched as the pressure left white marks repeatedly as the seconds crawled on. His parents were asleep down the hall. It was so quiet he could hear when coyotes started to howl through the screen of his open window. The air that came through was almost too cold, but he liked to be almost freezing when he slept.

The heaviness on his eyelids pressed harder. He let his head drop forward, closing his eyes. He’d been up nearly twenty-four hours. He wanted to sleep, but he wanted to see his soulmate’s hand print more.

He wondered if the fingers would be thin and delicate or more like his own, large and defined.

The cold air kept back the nausea as sweat broke out on his forehead.

He could only hope it wouldn’t be obviously masculine. If it was, he had a razor on the table.

Then, he _wanted_ his soulmate to have big hands. He wanted him to be able to hold him down just as well as he’d be able to hold him. He wanted to feel thick fingers working him open, roughness on the soft skin of his balls. He wanted hands that felt warm and firm when they held his face. He wanted even the softest of touches to feel strong and sweet at teh same time. 

He inhaled through his nose and out through his mouth three times. Anxiety killed some of his exhaustion, but just enough for him to look over his shoulder at his clock.

2:45.

He closed his eyes again and clenched his hands. Bile was climbing up the back of his throat. He took a shaky breath before opening his eyes and staring at the black mark as dark as a tattoo on his chest in the mirror.

All the air left his lungs.

He looked down and rubbed his skin. His fingers left red marks on either side of the print. It reflected back at him, larger than his palm. A wolf’s paw marked on his chest.

He turned eighteen dry-heaving into the trashcan beside his bed.

 

The soulmate mark was on his body less than thirty minutes.

His hands shook when he laid the razor blade down on the bathroom counter. Blood stained his underwear and was tacking on his stomach and chest. Chris pulled the piece of his skin taut between his hands, staring down at it while he sat on the closed toilet lid. His own blood started to dry and stink like change.

He ran his thumb over it while his eyes burned. Tears were dried on his cheeks from the pain. Now more leaked from his eyes. Heat was crawling into his cheeks and down his neck. 

 

After bandaging his chest, he went down to the kitchen and took a small corning ware dish from the back of his mom’s dishes. He filled it with water and laid the piece of skin inside. His fingers left bloody prints on the ceramic as his chest throbbed so hot it was nearly cold beneath the gauze bandage. The next night he would begin scrapping his flesh from the underside of the hide. He would get lime and remove the hair. It would take a long time, but he would treat it and cure it. He would keep it. 

His chest would heal. It would never be the same. Anyone who looked would always know that he had a secret, but as he stared at the wolf’s paw in the glow of the kitchen light, he was comforted that his dad would only think it had been a man’s hand. He would just think his son was a faggot.

That was better.

It was better than his father knowing that his son’s soulmate was a werewolf.

Chris breathed quietly out his nose as the tears slowly came again. He wouldn’t cry again when the sun came up. Treating and keeping his mark was weak enough. Wanting what he wanted with men was humiliating enough. He would handle this how he needed to. He would push it down where it belonged, with the exhaustion of little sleep, the fear of hunting something that could so easily end his life when he’d barely begun it, he’d push it down with the urges that had come with puberty and the too long looks he gave some of the men they worked with.

He’d keep it further below than that.

But lower he’d keep the hurt that went deeper than the skin on his chest, that pulsed low in his heart. His soulmate would never be his. He would never feel the peace that he had imagined, even if it had had to be in quietly lived life, calling him his friend. He would never know that he was loved on a soul deep level by someone that rounded him. He would never feel the warm rough embrace of his soulmate and know that they were touched by fate to be best friends, companions, lover, partners.

He was Gerard Argent’s only and oldest child.

The only piece he would ever half of his wolf would be the print of his paw, cured and hidden in the quietest hours of his life.

**Author's Note:**

> I will be adding to this fic eventually, but for now it's a stand alone. I want to get Anchors and my Sterek WIP finished before I indulge in this. I had to give in just a little bit and post this after working on it tonight.


End file.
